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posted by chromas on Friday July 17 2020, @02:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the if-you-have-nothing-to-hide-y—oh-wait dept.

Facial recognition linked to a second wrongful arrest by Detroit police:

A false facial recognition match has led to the arrest of another innocent person. According to the Detroit Free Press, police in the city arrested a man for allegedly reaching into a person's car, taking their phone and throwing it, breaking the case and damaging the screen in the process.

Facial recognition flagged Michael Oliver as a possible suspect, and the victim identified him in a photo lineup as the person who damaged their phone. Oliver was charged with a felony count of larceny over the May 2019 incident. He said he didn't commit the crime and the evidence supported his claim.

The perpetrator, who was recorded in footage captured on a phone, doesn't look like Oliver. For one thing, he has tattoos on his arms, and there aren't any visible on the person in the video. When Oliver's attorney took photos of him to the victim and an assistant prosecutor, they agreed Oliver had been misidentified. A judge later dismissed the case.

[...] Late last month, Detroit Police Chief James Craig suggested the technology the department uses, which was created by DataWorks Plus, isn't always reliable. "If we were just to use the technology by itself, to identify someone, I would say 96 percent of the time it would misidentify," he said in a public meeting, according to Motherboard. From the start of the year through June 22nd, the force used the software 70 times per the department's public data. In all but two of those cases, the person whose image the technology analyzed was Black.


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  • (Score: 1) by FR on Friday July 17 2020, @09:53AM (4 children)

    by FR (11655) on Friday July 17 2020, @09:53AM (#1022817)

    Again the press is feeding the public an erroneous interpretation.

    The man was not arrested because of image recognition software; he was arrested because a living, breathing human being picked him from a photo line up. The image recognition software was only utilized to provide a potential lead -- and the lead was properly checked out by human detectives.

    The only fault here is the misinterpretation made by the press and public.

    I am no fan of image recognition software but in this and previous cases it was indeed used properly by the police.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Friday July 17 2020, @11:03AM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday July 17 2020, @11:03AM (#1022839) Homepage
    > human being picked him from a photo line up

    If there's one thing you can rely on about eye-witness evidence is that you can be pretty sure that you can't trust eye-witness evidence.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @11:08AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @11:08AM (#1022840)

    and the lead was properly checked out by human detectives

    Except it wasn't. The police blindly trusted the computer that the suspect looked identical. At the very least they should have verified for themselves (then they would have seen it was a poor match), then check if the suspect had an alibi (people do have lookalikes), and only then they should have put him in a line-up.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @04:56PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @04:56PM (#1022963)

      yes, the vast majority (not a tiny minority like idiots and media whores like to say) cops are lazy, stupid, corrupt, seditious fucks who will gladly railroad anyone they think they can get away with railroading. a conviction is a conviction.giving them tools that give them a false sense of accuracy, or false leads, or excuses to frame people is beyond stupid and dangerous.

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 18 2020, @12:55AM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 18 2020, @12:55AM (#1023155) Journal

    Lineups are notorious for being manipulated. I would like to see the photos used for the photo lineup. 37 white guys, 18 Asians, and one black guy - pick out the black suspect, alright?